Tomo Kihara, intern at the Future Internet Lab of Waag, won both the Grand-Prix as the public award of WIRED Creative Hack Award 2017 in Japan with his project ‘Street Debater - Designing social alternative to begging’. The project is aimed at finding alternatives for begging by introducing a new job, named streetdebatting.
Streetdebatting is a new type of profession that collects public opinion in exchange for money. The debater raises questions regarding public interest to start a friendly debat with passerby’s. Streetdebatting is a method to earn money as beggar in a dignified way while reconnecting with society. Additionally, streetdebatting offers opportunity to spark public discussion between people from different backgrounds.
WIRED launched the Creative Hack Award to offer the next generation an opportunity to lead the Japanese creative industry to the next level. Tomo was one of the eighteen finalists of 2017. The project Street Debater was initiated during his study at the TU Delft. Read more about Tomo’s project here.
At Waag Tomo works on his project Phonvert aimed at investigating and developing alternatives from retired smartphones to reduce material waste.
